It was an easy choice. When I received the brochure for the 2017-2018 Philadelphia Orchestra season last spring, the concert on Friday evening, March 16, was an immediate check on my list for ticket purchases. The orchestra would be playing Leonard Bernstein’s Symphony No. 2, The Age of Anxiety . Th...

Having attended pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard’s recitals in 2010 and 2012, I knew that his recital on Tuesday, March 13, would not be an evening of comfortable entertainment. First, as an ardent advocate of contemporary or modernist music, I knew that at least some of his program would be challengin...

Mr. Trump’s opposition to the project is in part the result of his belief that it is important to Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader, according to one person with knowledge of the president’s thinking on the issue. Once again, Trump's pettiness and self-absorption (it's all ab...

(For those who don't know, Harris easily takes the prize as the most distinguished-looking member.) Agreed! And I have the pleasure of seeing Harris fairly regularly at piano recitals sponsored by the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society. Next recital: Pierre-Laurent Aimard on March 13, with a progra...

People refer to Australia's gun controls but we have plenty of hand guns here in the possession of criminals, and drive-by shootings and public executions occur reasonably regularly. But we do not have people brandishing military weapons. Exactly my point. Every society has criminals and those with...

Discussions never focus on individual human evil, it is as if the criminal bore no responsibility for the crime. All anger is directed at external factors and all discussion moves to political or sociological spheres, never to the moral one. Sorry, I don't accept this. Advocates of gun control (lik...

My law school dean recently asked me to take a leave of absence next year and to cease teaching a mandatory first-year course. He explained that he was getting “pressure” to banish me for my unpopular views and hoped that my departure would quell the controversy. When I suggested that it was his jo...

Joshua Bell posted this informative piece about his Strad on the Philadelphia Orchestra website: My violin is over 300 years old. Known as the Gibson ex-Huberman, the revered instrument came into my life one fateful day during the summer of 2001. I was in London, getting ready to play a Proms concer...

The Eagles are a team of destiny. Forget the statistics. They will be the Super Bowl winner. Trust me. Philadelphia is a wonderful city in so many ways and they deserve a winner. :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D cliftwood What a game! What a season! It's a great morning to be an Eagles fan...

Does everyone feel the same about Dutoit? Yes. This would be the wrong time to feature Dutoit in a radio broadcast. That being said, I will certainly not discard my Dutoit CDs, nor will the recent revelations erase my memories of many outstanding Philadelphia Orchestra concerts under his direction.

​First of all, let me clear up for the uninitiated this stuff about the orchestras. Classical music fans do not need this; most are familiar with the story. But many of my readers are not regular classical music fans and must be curious about what the difference is between the Philharmonia and the ...

It was certainly an unusual sight at a Philadelphia Orchestra concert—a bagpiper, in full regalia, slowly marching down the left aisle of Verizon Hall, playing a tune with the stirring but mournful sounds of his instrument. We saw and heard this in the final moments of Peter Maxwell Davies’ An Orkne...

I just found this comment under an article in an online political journal and I think it makes sense. It makes sense if the essence of the matter is Trump's vulgarity. But that's only one aspect of the story. The bigger problem for me is that Trump used vulgarity to express his preference for white...

I'm all-Verizon these days: TV, Internet, Cell Phone....and even landline. Customer service is reasonably good, certainly better than Comcast when I had that service about 9 years ago. The only problem I've had with cell phone service is that, for several months, many incoming calls went straight to...

If someone had told me three or four years ago that the President of the United States was engaged in a social media joust about the size and power of his "button," I would have said that this was an entertaining but highly improbable plot line for a fictional series on one of the cable channels.

On one occasion in the 1960s, for instance, an airline barred Mr. Mann from bringing his Stradivarius aboard as carry-on luggage. Capitulating, he bought a seat for the instrument and belted it in. At mealtime, Mr. Mann tucked a napkin under the seatbelt and insisted that the flight attendant serve...

Wall Street Journal All that work will have a payoff, at least: CPAs acknowledge the complexity of the new overhaul is likely to ensure demand for their services remains high. There is no more talk that tax rules would be so simple that returns could fit on a postcard. In particular, changes in the...

MHO is that Chalkie may have been hacked by an impersonator, which is trying to ruin his reputation online. It's been known to happen to celebrities before........ I saw the two deleted messages when they first appeared and figured this was the case. That's what I suspected. Lance, any comments?

Not surprisingly, this was front page, above the fold, news in the Philadelphia Inquirer. They ran the AP story, plus an article by cultural affairs writer and music critic Peter Dobrin about Dutoit's long and close association with the Philadelphia Orchestra. This afternoon, the following statement...

Some more thoughts on this issue. While it was momentarily refreshing to see a Republican Senator (John N. Kennedy of Louisiana) take on Peterson and two other judicial nominees, and for those three nominees to withdraw, other bad nominations have proceeded forward. Here's an excerpt from a piece in...

This video was amazing (in a bad way). I had very limited private practice exposure before joining State government, but even I had more experience in litigation than this guy! He has now (wisely) withdrawn his name from the nomination process. Parenthetically, litigation experience is less crucial ...

One thing is comforting -- in 2016 candidates could not help but reveal who they really were. Trump a loathsome slimeball, Hillary a nagging suffragette. Choose your poison. Hillary's "basket of deplorables" remark was a serious gaffe, and she made some other costly errors in her campaign (amply do...

It's called UseNet, and its "forums" are called NewsGroups. RMCR (rec.music.classical.recordings) is such a group, and though it is not what it once was, it still contains lots of useful information on a slew of classical music topics and relatively little these days in the way of trolling, flame w...

Composer-pianists—virtuoso pianists who compose works to showcase their own performance skills—were a common sight in 19th and early 20th Century concert halls. Today, they are a rarity. Until recently, the list of prominent composer-pianists stopped at one: Marc-André Hamelin. Now we can add the Ru...

Today at our last community music group presentation for 2017, in which we invited our audience to bring along their favourite pieces of music, I heard for the very first time the piano music of Leoš Janáček and his " In the Mists " https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_lFekGwREs4 Being totally unfamili...

What happens when musical prodigies grow up? Some of them fade out. In their late teens and twenties, they find that they can no longer rely on their youthfulness to stand out from the crowd of other gifted musicians. But then there are those like British pianist Benjamin Grosvenor. Now age 25, he i...

Mr. Trump did not answer a direct question about whether he believed Mr. Putin’s denials, which contradict the assessment of American intelligence agencies that the Russian president had directed an elaborate effort to interfere in the vote. The folks who work in our intelligence agencies must be i...

....the Bach-Busoni is, in my opinion (and also that of Tim Page), more impressive than the Horowitz performance at his great comeback (1965) recital. Don, perhaps you can answer this question. In the very first minute, after a couple of rapid runs, Hungerford plays a repeated chord, while Horowitz...

I heard Zimerman only once in recital, 13 years ago. The highlight of the program was Chopin's Sonata No. 2 ("Funeral March") and his performance was breathtaking. Here's the review I wrote after this November 9, 2004 recital: According to an interview published in Tuesday's Philadelphia Inquirer, K...

Is the piano recital dying? I can only speak from my experience in Philadelphia, where the answer is a definite "no." The Philadelphia Chamber Music Society has been sponsoring a piano recital series for 30 years, and I've had the pleasure of attending many of these for the past 18 seasons (generall...